Driving assistance systems are used to assist drivers to operating vehicles. One type of driving assistance systems is capable of estimating a driver's intention, such that appropriate machine intervention is provided to either assist the intended operation or avoid operation risks associated with the intended operation. An example of conventional driving assistance systems with intention estimation calculates a likelihood value to a lane-keeping driving pattern to maintain the vehicle in the same lane, and a likelihood value of a lane-changing driving pattern to change lanes. The system selects one of the driving patterns with the highest likelihood value and assigns the selected driving pattern as the estimated intention of the driver.
However, these conventional systems are not adaptive to certain types of driving patterns and environments, such as an out-in-out operation on a curve or a road with bad surface conditions. Due to the unique lateral control of the vehicle involved in such driving patterns and environments, conventional systems tend to assume that the driver intends to change lanes, while the driver in fact intends to keep in the same lane for turning curves or cornering.
Therefore, there is a need for driving assistance methods and systems with adaptive intention estimation addressing dynamic changes in driving patterns and environments.